I suppose those are the CEOs of HP, IBM and Xerox . Just a minor point: not all Fortune 500 companies are tech companes, so there should be more women in this image. 21 more, to be precise. See? The problem isn’t as bad as you thought! (Although that actually makes the tech sector slightly better than average in this area, with a huge 7% of companies headed by women).

Good for them. For my part, I pay attention to stories of sexism at companies and simple don’t buy their products. If they have a way to comment on their products, I explain why. I also make sure my friends are aware of it as well.

This article seems fine in outlining the disparities women face in tech, but the central framing of “What Etsy is Doing” is problematic.

They build their own pipeline.
Rather than sit around and wait for female students to sign up, Harvey Mudd made its introductory computer science course mandatory, and then actively encouraged students to sign up for the second. In a similar quest to stock its own talent pool, Etsy sponsors a summer Hacker School, which offers grants to women looking to amp up their engineering skills.

The author also tries to insinuate that Hacker School is an antidote for typical silicon valley culture as epitomized by Y-Combinator

Y-Combinator has 600-something startups that we’ve started. They all look up to the Dropboxes and Airbnbs and Stripes. If they say it’s important for us to have women at the top levels of our organization, that trickles down,” says Jessica Livingston. That’s probably true, but examples like Etsy show that saying something is important isn’t enough. Doing and being something different is what matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Hacker School is a great project/experiment and love seeing them get press, but I am troubled by the slanted way this piece framed them. (and, to a large extent, understated what they’re doing).

One of the reasons is that there’s not enough support when folks decide to have kids. The paternity leave at most places is pretty terrible too, and unfortunately most of the burden of child-care usually falls to women. Ideally workplaces should have equal time off for both paternity and maternity leave.

Yeah, I’m juggling two phone calls right now, so can’t look it up, but there’s a well known story in which a career consultant says: if you’re a man, make sure to have family photos in your office, but if you’re a woman, make sure to NOT have family photos visible.